Cisco is making two new investments in Ontario’s Kitchener-Waterloo area.

The company officially opened the new Cisco Incubation Centre onThursday morning. It will be part of the David Johnston Research andTechnology Park at the University of Waterloo (UW), as reported in theKitchener-WaterlooRecord.

The incubation facility will give students access to Cisco’scollaboration technology, expertise and worldwide partner system, thecompany said in a statement. The centre will be linked to similarresearch parks around the world.

It’s part of Cisco’s move to strengthen its ties with Canadianuniversity R&D programs. It has similar relationships with theUniversity of Winnipeg, the University of New Brunswick and theVancouver Island Technology Park.

Smart power grid technologies arethe focus of the new research chair position created by Cisco. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Cisco also said Thursday it will invest $1 million over the next fiveyears to create a research chair position at UW focused on new smartgrid technologies. The inaugural chair will be held by UW computerscience professor Srinivasan Keshav, who is also a Canada ResearchChair in tetherless computing.

Christine Wong has been an on-air reporter for a national daily show on Rogers TV and at High Tech TV, a weekly news magazine on CTV's Ottawa affiliate. She was also an associate producer at Report On Business Television (now called BNN) and CBC's The Hour With George Stroumboulopoulos. As an associate producer at Slice TV, she helped launch two national daily talk shows, The Mom Show and Three Takes. Recently, she was a Staff Writer at ITBusiness.ca and is now a freelance contributor.